Civic Strike Month #3: An Open Letter to the Mayor of Vancouver

Mr. Sullivan,

This young century has seen at least two people win elections by questionable means. While one of them managed to rise above those suspicions during a national crisis (only to fall from grace later), it looks like you are shirking whatever opportunities this strike has afforded you to show the people of Vancouver that you are deserving of a post of leadership.

Politics is as much about image as it is about reality. The image you're conveying is one of a flake. It is clear that you have no intention of running for re-election, but we deserve better than that right now. Resign, sir, and hand the reins over to someone who can end this mess, or at least appears to care.

These boots were made for driving around the block

Today's local back-to-school feature in the Vancouver Sun, "Keeping Students Safe", quotes Surrey school trustee Laurae McNally admonishing parents that their kids are perfectly capable of a five-minute walk to get to school.

"We need to really emphasize to parents that if they only live a block or two from school, they should be letting their children walk," she said.

She's not saying that parents currently are driving their kids one block to school, right? One would hope, but then reporter Janet Steffenhagen quotes her "adding" that "she's dismayed to see parents drive children one block to school and then turn around and drive back."

Newsflash: find does printf

Maybe it's not news to you that find has a printf action, but I learned my Unix from a printed copy of an early version of AT&T's Programmers Workbench I bought at a flea market over <gulp> twenty years ago. "Bought for free" -- the seller didn't have a clue what it was and was happy to free up the four inches of shelf space. I read the commands for sections 1, 2, 3, and 8 practically from cover to cover. This came in very handy when I was transferring files between Suns and SCO boxes in the early 90s (way before SCO became vilified) using the venerable cpio command.

The hard copy was way better than reading man pages on 80x24 monochrome terminals. But the disadvantage of learning so much early on was that I rarely used man commands to look them up, and didn't discover new additions. So there was an email discussion going on at work on a build issue, and the sys admin mentioned a command along the lines of this:

find dir -name '*.foo' printf "mkdir -p ../../target/%h ; cp %p ../../other-dir/%h\n" | sh

Next time I'm about to write a command like

for i in `find` ; do
...
done

I'm going to try using the printf ... | sh combination instead. Not on OS X, you say? Pity.

Your search for back issues of "Many Happy Returns" is over

Andy Cross announces that the USBA has digitized every issue of its newsletter
from #20 in 1984 to the present, and is shipping a CD of PDF files:

I would also like to take this opportunity to announce the availability of all back issues of Many Happy Returns (#20 to #95) in PDF format. There is lots of great information in these newsletters and many of the earlier ones are difficult to come by. The files will be distributed on either a CD or DVD (your choice). The price is 25 issues (your choice of issues) for $15 USD ($20 USD for non-USBA members) or the complete set for $40 USD ($50 USD for non-USBA members) plus $5 USD for shipping. This is excellent value considering that the issues date all the way back to 1984 and that subsets typically sell for over $1.50 per issue. The prices listed above are $0.60 per issue for the 25 issue set and ~$0.53 per issue if you go for the complete set. Shipping of the disc will also be a fraction of what it would cost to mail the actual issues. All proceeds from the sale of these discs will be donated to the USBA. If you are interested in obtaining a copy of the disc you can send payment and the details of your order (i.e. DVD or CD and which issues) to myself at the address below or you can make payment via PayPal (across@telusplanet.net).

Tib, I guess I can pick up that box of newsletters of mine now.

Anyone who wants Andy Cross's physical address, send me a note.
Like anyone who's interested can't find it...

Our great times

Who would've thought we'd get to the point where you can spend a summer's day in the mountains sitting in your room blogging just for the sake of blogging?

Ball Golf, of course

From a Tyee article on disc golf:

The game is played much the same as traditional golf (or, as disc golfers call it, "ball golf") with tee-offs, pars, birdies and bogies. But that's about where the similarities end.

The best rock concert review I won't let you read

Wolfgang dropped a basket of semi-obscure treasures this week, possibly the first list free of any of the stalwarts you hear on classic rock. The best known is Rod Stewart with the Faces from an October 1973 show. I gave the show a listen out of curiosity, not nostalgia, and it's worth a listen. The band was undeniably talented, although not era-defining.

The show also reminded me of a review someone I know wrote on one of Rod's shows in 1977. Now maybe 21-year-olds today can be held accountable all their life for their public writings. They're grown up with the internet, alta vista, and google, and have an innate understanding that words are forever. But can you hold an ambitious 21-year-old accountable forever who was trying to get some attention by inciting an uproar with a review of a mediocre concert?

But thirty years ago no one writing for a college paper would expect their words to come back to haunt them a generation later. Who knew that one day colleges all over the place would scan their morgues and put the contents where google could find them? The article is googleable, and so memorable for me it was easy to find, but I won't quote it directly. If the writer wants to come public with it, let him. Or her. Yeah, right.

Fortunately for the writer, it's hard to find it unless you include his name in the query. The article is packed with gems, slagging Rod and his band for being predictable, and not worth the whopping eight dollars fifty the fans shelled out. But a homophobic rant runs through the first half that rarely lets up. I can't see how it would get published today. Most people would think twice before putting their name on it. Editors would cancel it. And if it did get published, there would be a national outrage in the blogosphere. In 1977, while not as accepting a time as today, straights were still hanging out at the gay bars. David Bowie, the New York Dolls, and Lou Reed had forged a path of androgynous glammy rock that had found mainstream acceptance. Rod was just jumping on yet another bandwagon with his eye shadow, hair highlights, and other metrosexual accessories. Selling tickets and vinyl. Big deal.

Could the writer have written a politically correct review of the show? Sure, but would it have had the same impact? He scored all kinds of hits that year, including interviews with Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and Patti Smith. I read them, and I don't recall a word of them now. Picking on Rod Stewart was journalistic low-hanging fruit. While I can understand obsessed collectors who have hundreds of Grateful Dead or Phish tapes, or Japanese imports by Dylan or Springsteen, I can't imagine what kind of person would need to own every single album of Rod Stewart's (hi grandma).

I finally read the full article. Guess what -- pull out the homophobia and it's a deveined tepid phoned-in account of an uninspiring show. Which kind of sums up how I remember most rock music of the era.